I’m really interested in how to police social media for kids. I say the word “police” kind of gingerly. But what do we do about all the cruelty and harshness out there online? It is something that social-media companies themselves struggle with, and I generally think that they don’t do enough about it. The police and law enforcement and schools also find this to be a really difficult issue. It is such an overwhelming amount of content, and it is not really clear what their role is. When I realized that there was all of this vigilante activism going on, I became interested in how it was playing out online, and what effect it is having on the lives of kids.

Why is there so much opportunity for vigilantism? Is online harassment so new that the police have not yet figured out how to enforce the law — or is the law lagging behind?

I do think that there are big gaps in the law that these groups are trying to fill. Whether they are doing that successfully or not is another question. They are addressing a vacuum. I would favor stronger laws or stronger enforcement of laws that go after people for cyberstalking or for posting revenge porn, which I have also written about. Those laws might have helped some of the girls I wrote about in the article. I also think there is a big gray area here. Cruelty on social media can add up to being really traumatic, but it can be hard to know whether it is criminal or not. It’s clear that circulating sexually explicit photos of a teenager could violate the law. But when you are talking about people just writing a lot of nasty stuff online, it is less clear. New laws could address some of these things, but some of them are social problems that have to do with changing norms.

The Anonymous operatives are famously secretive. How did you approach them and why did they agree to be interviewed?

It was through Twitter. Because I’ve written before about this issue, there were some people who were willing to trust me. These were relationships that took months to develop. A lot of activists have a hunger to be recognized and to feel like they are reaching as many people as they can reach. So even though in Anonymous the biggest sin you can commit is to be a glory-seeker, if you feel that talking to a reporter might help you reach more children in order to help them, you might be able to talk yourself into it. And you might not feel as if the community will rip you to shreds for doing it. I’m not sure what the reaction to the article will be, and maybe some of the people who talked to me will get raked over the coals for it if they are seen as courting publicity. Still, they want to further their activism. They all, to a person, resisted glory for themselves.What is their opinion of routine law enforcement?

They feel that whatever mistakes their fellow activists make, law enforcement makes worse mistakes. There is a lot of mutual antagonism there. In the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Canadian teenager who hanged herself after photos of her being raped were circulated in her town, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police initially said they didn’t have enough evidence to bring charges. Then, following Anonymous’s efforts to draw attention to the case, the R.C.M.P. announced that they would reopen that investigation, and later two boys were charged for distributing child pornography. Anonymous felt they had stuck it to law enforcement.

I came away from your article really down on Internet vigilantism. How do you feel about it?

I think each operation, or op, needs to be judged individually. Ones that have really responsible people working on them are probably on balance a good thing. I think that is true of Maryville and probably also of the one about Rehtaeh Parsons, although that one is more fraught, because there was an innocent person accused. Others really go off the rails, which of course is the difficulty with vigilantism — it has no ties to any sort of institution. I think you can have a healthy skepticism about it for all the obvious reasons: It isn’t under anyone’s control, and it can go awry. I’m glad that you read my article and came away with a strong reaction, even if it is different from the one I had.

To what extent does Anonymous contribute to the problem of people being falsely accused of crimes?

It depends whom you believe, but there are aspects of the Steubenville case that have the same troubling element. We tend to be absorbed by the cases in the headlines, but when other people get falsely accused, we might be less likely to see it.

What determines if Anonymous gets involved in something?

It’s pretty random. It depends on the collective judgment of the group. The people who are the wisest in the world I was writing about are trying to look for where they can have the biggest impact. Where is a really serious injustice? They are not looking for just some teenagers or adults individually behaving badly, but a real institutional lapse. What really interests Anonymous is when they feel the authorities have just completely blown it, and they can step in and play the role of hero. Or at least the role of, Let’s reopen this case and make sure we thoroughly investigate before we decide not to prosecute.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…